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Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director)
According to information from Le Parisien, the Administrative Court of Paris considered that the report of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs on the management of the Covid-19 crisis was not of a confidential nature. Three years after the start of the pandemic, it was officially released on Wednesday.
It took 2 and a half years for the Ministry of Health to be transparent about its management of Covid, “coerced and forced” by a judgment of the Administrative Court of Paris, announces the daily le Parisian which reveals the stages of this supposedly confidential document.
Much effort to keep this report confidential
The audit is requested in June 2020, at the end of the first confinement by Olivier Véran, then Minister of Health. The report, named “Feedback from the management of the response to the Covid-19 epidemic by the Ministry of Solidarity and Health” was returned to him in November of the same year… without crossing the walls of the ‘executive. Without being relayed to the French public, especially.
The daily the Parisianwhich investigates the management of covid, therefore requests the‘Igas in February 2021, then the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents, before chaining requests before the Administrative Court of Paris, and the Council of State to have access to the famous feedback. It publishes so-called confidential data last January.
A legal obligation to make this report public
The case is now decided: the Administrative Court of Paris estimated, on February 22, that“in the absence of any precision as to the nature and the deadline of the decisions that he would recommend to adopt, the Minister of Health does not demonstrate that any decision was taken on his basis, nor that decisions would be under development and that it would be inseparable from a decision-making process. Thus, contrary to what is claimed, it does not have the character of a preparatory document for one or more administrative decisions”.
The refusal to communicate on this report no longer holds. The Minister of Health was thus required to send this report within 14 days of notification of the judgment. The 205 pages were therefore published this Wednesday, April 5.
Management outdated on several points, a damning report
The audit aimed to identify “successes, difficulties and shortcomings” revealed by the epidemic and in particular the organization put in place between January 2020 and the summer of the same year (during the first wave of Covid-19). “No less than 375 people – ministerial executives, directors of regional health agencies (ARS), hospitals or nursing homes, nursing staff, prefects, elected officials, etc. – were interviewed as part of this ‘retex’ ” noted the Parisian.
With an acknowledgment of failure: we read there an organization of a health crisis center “difficult to read, both externally and internally”. “The organization of crisis management experienced such a breakdown that during the mission, no actor met seemed to have a clear and exhaustive vision of it, whatever their hierarchical level”, note the authors. Faced with an exceptional health event, the crisis center on avenue de Ségur quickly found itself “overwhelmed” And “failed to organize itself in a structured and sustainable way”. This caused in particular the forgetting of the 611,000 seniors residing in retirement homes (Ehpad) during the first weeks of the crisis. Among others.
“Orders and counter-orders typical of the health system today”
Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo regrets that transparency has not been the norm on a subject of this importance for the citizen:
“It’s not about repeating history after history, but this kind of report allows us to anticipate, that’s what we call feedback. However, it is difficult to give feedback if it is not public.
But the very content of the report, the disorganization cited, is for him symptomatic of a system in crisis, whether during the pandemic as today:
“This Covid crisis was managed on the ground with counter orders from above, as is the case outside of the crisis. We have a poisoning by the technostructure which is ineffective, inoperative. Yes, there was the excuse of the exceptional situation in 2020, but that is what we unfortunately see on a daily basis today. This is one of the key elements of the crisis in the health system: orders and constant counter-orders, disconnection from the field, public health doctors who only have doctors in name… It’s dramatic.”